title: Vaccines against Toxoplasma gondii: new developments and perspectives.
abstract: Toxoplasmosis caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii is a major public health problem, infecting one-third of the world human beings, and leads to abortion in domestic animals. A vaccine strategy would be an ideal tool for improving disease control. Many efforts have been made to develop vaccines against T. gondii to reduce oocyst shedding in cats and tissue cyst formation in mammals over the last 20 years, but only a live-attenuated vaccine based on the S48 strain has been licensed for veterinary use. Here, the authors review the recent development of T. gondii vaccines in cats, food-producing animals and mice, and present its future perspectives. However, a single or only a few antigen candidates revealed by various experimental studies are limited by only eliciting partial protective immunity against T. gondii. Future studies of T. gondii vaccines should include as many CTL epitopes as the live attenuated vaccines.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Etiological Biology, Key Laboratory of Veterinary Parasitology of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu Province 730046, PR China.
authors.forename: Nian-Zhang
authors.initials: NZ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Eskild
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Petersen
authors.forename: Xing-Quan
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic; D002371:Cat Diseases / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002415:Cats; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D016052:Protozoan Vaccines / Q000276:immunology* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D014122:Toxoplasma / Q000276:immunology*; D014123:Toxoplasmosis / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control; D014124:Toxoplasmosis, Animal / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*
chemical_list: D016052:Protozoan Vaccines